


the modern wolf, he's kinder

by biggorillawolves



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (but there's more), F/M, I just wanted bellamy and clarke to hug tbh, Romance, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 21:43:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1998942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggorillawolves/pseuds/biggorillawolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tactile evolution of Bellamy and Clarke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the modern wolf, he's kinder

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! This is the first fic I have written in a very, very long while. But I had this idea and it wouldn't leave me alone so here we are. I'm ignoring the mountain men because I don't even a little want to touch that.

The first time things felt different, Bellamy was alive. Clark and the rest of the survivors emerged from the dropship, changed. She wasn’t even sure how to feel. How was she supposed to feel seeing bodies singed to ash, enemies and friends? How was she supposed to measure that on a scale of emotions she’d experienced before? It felt like a vacuum more than it did an actual grief, it was so immense and incomparable. And she had to stay strong, when all of her people turned to look at her, gauging for a reaction.  
  
Clark instantly turned to action, it’s what Bellamy would’ve done. And it’s what she decided to do, turning resolutely away from their bodies and issuing orders. Bellamy wouldn’t have sat and grieved, at least not publicly, and so she blinked away tears and ordered teams.  
  
She sent some to evaluate the strength of their wall, some of the ones she knew to be thicker skinned to begin clearing bodies, some she knew to have skin much less thick to inventory surviving tents and supplies, and the youngest of them to ready the interior of the dropship to accommodate those that no longer had shelter outside or just didn’t want to sleep where there had once been bodies. The last, her most trustworthy, she had guard Anya. Miller and Jasper wouldn’t kill her or let her escape, and she could think later about what precisely to do with her.  
  
In a last fit of hope, while no one was looking, Clarke went to the entrance of the tunnel. _Maybe. If they had time..._ But there was nothing. In fact, the tunnel had caved. She took a deep, chest rattling sigh. Even if they had made it, the tunnel itself would have killed them. Clarke straightened her back.  
  
She oversaw the repatching of the wall, helped move bodies that crumbled in her hands. She comforted survivors and moved them inside and gave them a blanket and some moonshine to warm them when she sensed them going into shock. Eventually, it grew darker, and with no reappearance of grounders she ordered the majority of the camp to bed, leaving a few volunteer vigilant watchmen that were so clearly not going to sleep anyway.  
  
Clarke empathized with them. She knew she was never going to be able to sleep that night. Her strength was crumbling, and her body felt like it was filling to the brim with something undefinable. She needed Finn. She even needed Bellamy. She needed Raven, but Raven hadn’t woken up yet. Her heartrate and vitals seemed stable, so Clarke hoped for the best, but without the support of those she had gotten so used to leaning on, she felt like she was doing everything wrong even when she knew there was nothing to really do right.  
  
She wasn’t even sure she’d actually heard people, or what exactly she’d said in response to them or even if she’d responded at all. The day had turned into a heavy fog. She walked in circles around the camp border, stopping every time to look at the tunnel. Eventually she gave up and just sat in front of it, looking at the fallen rubble like it had personally offended her.  
  
“Hey, Clarke, are you okay?” She looked up to see Simon, one of the volunteers, walking to her, much closer than she had been aware of a person being. He sat next to her.  
  
“I couldn’t take watching the trees anymore, started freaking me out,” he admitted, picking at the grass. Clarke nodded, aware that he expected to be admonished. _That’s what Bellamy would do. Tell him to go back to doing something useful._ But she couldn’t do it. That’s what Bellamy had been there for, to be tough when the camp needed it. Clarke wanted to be kept company more than she wanted to make up for Bellamy’s loss, so she gave him a half smile.  
  
“Yeah, I get that. Why do you think I was staring at this instead?” He smiled back, and they sat in silence for awhile, Clarke looking at the closed off tunnel, Simon picking at the grass.  
  
Next was Charlie, the youngest left in the entire camp, come searching for her after a nightmare. She sat by Clarke’s side, leaning on her shoulder and sniffling softly.  
The last addition was Jasper, shuffling up guiltily.  
  
“Anya kept spitting on me,” he admitted, plopping down on the other side of Charlie. It ended with the four of them sitting in silence. Charlie was dozing against Clarke and Clarke was beginning to feel tired herself when there was a thump. Her head jerked up, an immediate danger response. She saw Jasper do the same, Simon firmly asleep.  
  
“What was that?” She whispered, maneuvering out from under Charlie, carefully depositing the grumbling girl gently on the ground.  
  
“I don’t know,” Jasper failed to whisper back. His eyes were wide, and his hand found the machete strapped to his hip. There was another quiet thump, and this time they placed it. A pebble, fallen from the top of the rubble pile. Clarke almost told Jasper to stand down, that it was nothing but a randomly dislodged rock. But there was another, and then another, and then a tiny rockslide. And then muffled words. Clarke and Jasper stared in disbelief.  
  
“Look, we’re almost there.”  
  
“No, that’s the oxygen deprivation.”  
  
“Yeah, because you’re not tired or bleeding at all.”  
  
“God, shut up. I’m gonna kill myself before we ever even make it out of here and then what are the rest of them going to do?”  
  
“Live much happier, more peaceful lives?”  
  
“I’ll have you know-”  
  
“Bellamy? Finn?” Jasper’s voice cracked on the third syllable of Bellamy’s name, scrambling toward the tunnel before Clarke could properly process what was happening. Jasper was already digging frantically with his hands by the time Clarke got there, adding her own voice.  
“Are you guys in there?”  
  
“How about you help dig us out, Princess?” Bellamy’s voice replied, and Clarke felt a giddy rush that started in her head and traveled down her entire body, and the headiness doubled when Finn chimed in,  
  
“Clarke! Get us out of here!”  
  
She grinned and sobbed at the same time, digging her hands into rocks and dirt, scratching up her hands and breaking nails and continuing anyway. Simon joined in a moment later, awoken by the commotion. A few minutes of desperate digging later, and the top of the mound fell apart, and Bellamy’s hands pushed through, clearing a path. Then, after a bit of outside clearing, there was enough space for Bellamy himself to push through, headfirst, wiggling gracelessly through the hole before tumbling down what was left. He had barely made it to a sitting position when Jasper was on him, arms tight around Bellamy’s shoulders.  
  
“We thought you were dead, man.” Bellamy’s arm went around Jasper’s back, and then Jasper was hefting him to his feet, brushing away tears.  
  
“We thought we were dead, too.” Clarke had been watching, and suddenly she was a flood of emotion, then she realized Finn had not yet climbed through the hole. She peered through.  
  
“Finn?”  
  
He replied from below,  
  
“Yeah, we rescued someone injured, Rosa’s down here. She’s unconscious, but she’s alive.” Bellamy nodded.  
  
“Have you got her?”  
  
“Yeah,” Finn replied, and then there emerged a girl’s head and shoulders at the top of the hole, and Bellamy shuffling Clarke to the side to receive her, catching Rosa’s limp form and pulling her the rest of the way through. Finally Finn climbed up and out, with somehow even less grace than Bellamy had managed. Clarke was already assessing Rosa, finding immediately the wound on her temple, roughly bandaged from what she could see was a strip from the bottom of Bellamy’s shirt.  
  
“Let’s get her to the dropship, I’ll see what I can do. Was she unconscious the whole time?” Bellamy shook his head, but Finn answered.  
  
“No, she was awake when we were running for the tunnel, that’s how we knew she wasn’t just dead. She reached for us, and Bellamy picked her up. We barely made it far enough.” There was an edge of respect to Finn’s voice, that Bellamy had taken the minimum time to snatch up a surviving delinquent and bring her with them.  
  
"We think the blast when the tunnel caved knocked her out," Bellamy added. He was hefting Rosa up into his arms, and Clarke noticed that he was careful not to let her head loll around too much. _So he's been paying attention, at least._  
  
Clarke nodded, and when she was satisfied that Rosa wasn't being injured further, lead the way back to the dropship. She could see Finn and Bellamy hesitate at the carnage the camp was left in. More than she had thought there would be was intact, and a fair amount of salvaged tents were being slept in that night. But there was still the pile of the bodies close to one section of the wall, and a pile of ruined supplies at another.  
  
After Rosa had been as cared for as Clarke could manage for her and resting next to Raven, she allowed herself a breath. Things are not as bad as they were earlier. And that was a comforting thought.  
  
Bellamy was suddenly at her side, watching Rosa sleep right along with her.  
  
“Thank you,” she said, quietly. Bellamy looked at her.  
  
“I wasn’t going to leave her there to die,” he said.  
  
“No, thank you-" Clarke looked him in the eye. "-for being alive. I couldn’t have done this alone,” she replied, holding eye contact. The corner of Bellamy’s mouth tilted up.  
  
“Same goes for you, Princess.” Before she could think about it too much, she was throwing her arms around Bellamy’s neck, clutching him tight to her. He hesitated, or was surprised, for a second, and then she was surprised at the force with which he returned the hug, putting his face in her shoulder. She heard him take a ragged breath, and that was when it felt different. It felt different from the times they’d touched in camaraderie, a quick touch to the shoulder, or the time he had caught her hand with the weapon in it, wordlessly asking if she was all right. She felt safe, and like an integral part to her life was returned to her and that she would have been lost without it. They quietly broke together, complete in the trust that was implicit. There were too many dead and too many injured and too much ambiguity in what was going to happen next. But she felt like she could take it on, now.


End file.
